Wyre Forest Community Housing (part of The Community Housing Group) have been taking a mobile service to neighbourhoods and areas across the Wyre Forest to help working age tenants who may be affected by the Government’s Welfare Reform Act.

“We have a list of tenants who are under occupying their properties that we visit to try and help them.

We recently visited a tenant from that list to discuss her situation and see what we could do to help her.

The lady completed an information form and we learnt that she had two children who under the Welfare Reform Act should be sharing a bedroom, leaving the lady with a spare bedroom in her property.

However, the tenant explained that one of her children is disabled and has difficulty sleeping, with the lady having to go to the child frequently during the night.

This means that the other child sharing the bedroom would have been subjected to constantly disrupted sleep. Consequently, the child was eligible to have their own bedroom, meaning that the tenant would now be exempt from the reduction in Housing Benefit for having a spare bedroom.

After receiving this information, we took the lady to the Money Advice Bus where somebody from the Housing Benefit department took a verbal statement from her, and put the exemption in motion”.